


Salt

by Katalyna_Rose



Series: Alie Hawke [13]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, In the Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-27 06:18:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12075237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katalyna_Rose/pseuds/Katalyna_Rose
Summary: For DWC (Talesfromthefade is my sideblog. Thanks for your prompt! ^_^ ): Your post mentioned liking more vague open ended prompts, so how about whatever "the smell of saltwater" conjures up for you. I'm thinking FenHawke, but I'm sure it'll be great whatever pairing or idea tickles your fancy.





	Salt

Alie thought Fenris always smelled like saltwater even when he hadn’t been near the coast recently. She liked to bury her face in his neck and breathe his scent, that salty cleanness with a hint of wet and growing things. She’d tangle her fingers in his hair and pull every time he smacked her ass just to hear him groan.

But smell of the water in the Fade, salty though it was, did nothing to remind her of home. It was dirty, oily, filthy like the fears that inhabited it. Drowning people were visible in the distance, existing only to lure them to try to save them. Those people could not be saved, if they were people at all. That water was tainted like the rest of this place was tainted. She would find no comfort here.

Salt stung her eyes as sweat dripped into them and even that was preferable to all the ways in which the smell of this ocean was wrong. She shuddered in disgust with each splash of water up her legs, plunging forward with determination to see the end of this place.

“And of course they look like giant spiders,” she lamented as the fear demons they fought scurried away from them once enough of them had been destroyed. But they didn’t look like spiders. They looked like Fenris in chains, a magister holding his leash. They looked like Fenris covered in blood, a familiar gaping hole in his chest. They looked like Carver succumbing to the Blight despite being a Grey Warden. They looked like her mother’s final moments, that twisted figure in a bloody gown that only bore her mother’s face, the rest of her unfamiliar. They looked like Fenris with his clothes hastily pulled on walking away from her in the early morning after coming to her bed for the first time. They looked like Fenris sneering in disgust at her use of magic. They looked like Fenris drowning in the saltwater that he always smelled like, and she wondered again why he smelled like that.

It was almost a relief that the Nightmare itself really did look like the biggest spider ever to exist. She preferred that horror over the ones she’d been treated to thus far. It hadn’t been easy to keep her composure when this awful beast told her that everyone she loved would die. It was her biggest fear, after all, the one written beneath her name in that graveyard of horrors that made each of them retch. She’d been infuriated, so much so that she had assaulted the wave-worn stone bearing her name until it finally crumbled. When it broke, it smelled like saltwater, but it was the right kind. For just a moment, she smelled that clean scent of life and Fenris and that was the only reason she was able to push on as she did. Fenris wasn’t going to die, not until they were old and tired and ready for the end of their long journey together.

She had a responsibility to destroy the Nightmare, to atone for waking Corypheus. She drew on the scent of tainted saltwater and in her mind she purified it to the scent of his skin. She remembered how she felt to give him all that she was, to relinquish herself into his care, and drew strength from it. She tried to rush the Nightmare, to meet her end with her head held high to give the others the means to escape, but Stroud beat her to it.

“For the Grey Wardens!” he yelled, sword bared and shield bashing into the creature’s many legs.

“No!” she screamed, nearly following him. The man who had saved her brother’s life, who had helped her when she needed him, smiled at her over his shoulder as the Inquisitor pulled her through the rift and back into Adamant, into the real world.

And when finally she saw Fenris again, his windblown hair and sweat-streaked skin smelled just like the ocean beyond Kirkwall. She buried herself in his arms and was enveloped by him, by his scent. And she was home, where no fears could reach her. He was free and healthy and strong and he was not going to leave her. He was not going to die, not while she was near to keep him safe. She’d failed before, but she wouldn’t fail again.

**Author's Note:**

> Unexpected angst is unexpected. I did not mean to write angst. Oh, well!
> 
> Also, I refuse to believe the fears in the Nightmare's realm actually looked like spiders. That was just for simplicity's sake, I'm sure.
> 
> Hawke and the Warden and the Inquisitor totally had gravestones in the Fade and no one can tell me otherwise! ... Loghain's probably just says "Orlais." XD


End file.
